When engaging the question, “What is political poetry?” we must take into account that there are various facets of one’s culture that may be termed “political.” For instance, in his “The Human Abstract,” “The Divine Image,” and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake engages religious politics and sets himself in opposition to various organizations and sects (including the deists); within “Joan of Arc, in Rheims” and “Arabella Stuart,” Felicia Hemans arguably engages gender politics; in The Prelude, William Wordsworth engages the politics of the French Revolution; and (among others) Elizabeth Barrett Browning (EBB), within the selections assigned, engages the politics of the abolitionist movement, gender politics, and (among others) laissez faire capitalism run amok in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. There are multifarious ways of engaging the “political,” but I believe we can be certain of at least one aspect of political poetry in not only the nineteenth century but, perhaps, (if I may be so bold) universally: these authors attempt to shake the foundations of authority, social structures, and/or customs that they personally perceive as morally corrupt and universally debilitating. Within their work, they use their poetic ethos as a solvent to bring complex and problematic conditions of their society to the fore in an effort to expand people’s consciousness and, vis-à-vis, inspire positive creativity and action.
EBB and other Victorians inherited many obligations of the poet as described by many Romantics—namely, as arbiters of “truth” and moral direction. The word “poet” carried with it, in a word, an ethos, and to be a widely read and culturally celebrated poet, such as EBB, meant a power to influence. EBB assumed this influential role as an arbiter of progressive social change, seemingly diverging from the Romantics in ways that spoke to her poetry as productive political activism. Taking up the Romantics’ appeals to their audiences’ sensibility and sentimentality, she uses a strong sense of pathos to move the audience to compassion, pity, and what would later be termed “empathy” but does so with content from and within the contemporary political movements: laissez faire capitalism and child labor, the abolitionist movement in American (having transatlantic audiences), and (among others) Italian revolutionary movements during the occupation of the Austria-Hungary Empire. “The Cry of the Children” and “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” are telling in respect to EBB’s stances on the universal, morally-debilitating effects of child labor and slavery.
Within both of these poems, EBB establishes both an empowered tone as well as a melancholic tone, and one thing is certain about how she presents both situations: they are both antithetic to nature (or Nature). These sentiments are perhaps best captured by the descriptions of children and slaves pitted against their animal counterparts: “The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, / The young birds are chirping in the nest, / The young fawns are playing with the shadows” (5-7) and “There’s a little dark bird, sits and sings; / There’s a dark stream ripples out of sight / …And the sweetest stars are made to pass” (31-2, 34). Not only does she forefront the unnatural conditions of both children and slaves but she also incorporates a religious pathetic appeal.
In “The Cry of the Children,” EBB writes, “Do not mock us, grief has made us unbelieving: / We look up for God, but tears have made us blind” (131-132). Born into servitude, without respite from the conditions of hard, manual labor in coal mines and other mechanized industries, their pains have turned (or are turning) them to impiety verging on atheism. Similarly, in “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point,” the female speaker, born into slavery and being denied a love that serves as a temporary repose from her own conditions, exclaims, “…you have set / Two kinds of men in adverse rows, / Each loathing each; and all forget / The seven wounds in Christ’s body fair, / While HE sees gaping everywhere / Our countless wounds that pay no debt” (233-38). Here, she describes the slave trade as a system that universally incites a lack of morality and spiritual fervor. Through such heightened pathetic appeals (in the positive sense of the word), EBB actively engages in the complex contemporary political and cultural issues, dawning the vestments of a moral guide and forefronting such contradictory and hypocritical systems in the public eye.
EBB and other Victorians inherited many obligations of the poet as described by many Romantics—namely, as arbiters of “truth” and moral direction. The word “poet” carried with it, in a word, an ethos, and to be a widely read and culturally celebrated poet, such as EBB, meant a power to influence. EBB assumed this influential role as an arbiter of progressive social change, seemingly diverging from the Romantics in ways that spoke to her poetry as productive political activism. Taking up the Romantics’ appeals to their audiences’ sensibility and sentimentality, she uses a strong sense of pathos to move the audience to compassion, pity, and what would later be termed “empathy” but does so with content from and within the contemporary political movements: laissez faire capitalism and child labor, the abolitionist movement in American (having transatlantic audiences), and (among others) Italian revolutionary movements during the occupation of the Austria-Hungary Empire. “The Cry of the Children” and “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” are telling in respect to EBB’s stances on the universal, morally-debilitating effects of child labor and slavery.
Within both of these poems, EBB establishes both an empowered tone as well as a melancholic tone, and one thing is certain about how she presents both situations: they are both antithetic to nature (or Nature). These sentiments are perhaps best captured by the descriptions of children and slaves pitted against their animal counterparts: “The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, / The young birds are chirping in the nest, / The young fawns are playing with the shadows” (5-7) and “There’s a little dark bird, sits and sings; / There’s a dark stream ripples out of sight / …And the sweetest stars are made to pass” (31-2, 34). Not only does she forefront the unnatural conditions of both children and slaves but she also incorporates a religious pathetic appeal.
In “The Cry of the Children,” EBB writes, “Do not mock us, grief has made us unbelieving: / We look up for God, but tears have made us blind” (131-132). Born into servitude, without respite from the conditions of hard, manual labor in coal mines and other mechanized industries, their pains have turned (or are turning) them to impiety verging on atheism. Similarly, in “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point,” the female speaker, born into slavery and being denied a love that serves as a temporary repose from her own conditions, exclaims, “…you have set / Two kinds of men in adverse rows, / Each loathing each; and all forget / The seven wounds in Christ’s body fair, / While HE sees gaping everywhere / Our countless wounds that pay no debt” (233-38). Here, she describes the slave trade as a system that universally incites a lack of morality and spiritual fervor. Through such heightened pathetic appeals (in the positive sense of the word), EBB actively engages in the complex contemporary political and cultural issues, dawning the vestments of a moral guide and forefronting such contradictory and hypocritical systems in the public eye.